Split Pea Soup

[Saviolo]

Whoops! With the holiday schedule and all, I totally forgot my weekly post here. This week we did sort of a Canadian classic recipe (with recipe help from my sister, who is great in the kitchen as well!) of split pea soup. This is a very hearty and warming soup of dried split peas and vegetables. It thickens on its own as the peas cook, and the carrots help, too. Most of the other veggies just melt into the soup and you just provide flavour. The way we've done it here you could do it vegan if you use vegetable broth instead of chicken stock. Or, going the other way, you could throw in a smoked ham hock before you add the peas, and that's a more traditional Canadian split pea soup.

One of the tricks we talk about is how we use leeks. We get fresh leeks, wash them, cut them into sections, and then freeze them. This makes them a little easier to deal with on the other end. They're more tender after they've been frozen, and they're a little easier to cut when you cut them still-frozen. We freeze the whites and the green parts separately, and then we can mix and match in whatever quantities we want.

[elleng]

1. Thanks for the timely tip;

have a large ham bone, with lots of remaining meat, so will see what I can do.

[Lindsay]

2. I usually buy a small ham for Christmas

just so I can use the bone for stock and make split pea soup using the remainder of the meat.

[elleng]

3. I brought 1/2 Honey Baked ham for daughter's family dinner,

and was lucky there were so many leftovers, having ham (+ egg) now; more with leftovers tomorrow!

[Arkansas Granny]

4. My mother would make this any time we had a good old ham bone.

Just before serving she would stir in a little heavy cream from our lovely little Jersey milk cows.